Category: Travel

Seriously, what it is about some cities that some people get all misty-eyed and pee-in-their-pants excited about? San Diego is one of those towns. Perhaps it’s in the second tier, but it’s still, but it’s still up there. Why?

My past experiences in San Diego lead me to believe it was a confusing and overrated city, but I felt we needed to try to understand it better. SO, instead of having any particular agenda for the day, we decided to pick a couple “ordinary” places to go to, and see what what we would see as we travelled to them, and poked around the area.

Chu-Wan has put out a call on babyhome.com.tw looking for Taiwanese ex-pats living in the San Diego area, hoping to find some good, home-style cooking. The response came back, “It’s not like we live in Los Angeles. There’s nothing here.” However, a restaurant called “168” was recommended, and it turned out to be inside the 99 Ranch supermarket. They also said that in the nearby area were tea shops and other things of Asian interest, so we headed off.

We didn’t have breakfast (the free continental breakfast at the hotel wasn’t worth bothering with) so I was quite hungry. It was too early when we arrived at 99 Ranch for 168 to be open, and they didn’t have posted hours of operation, so we didn’t know how the wait would be. We tried scouring the area and discovered several tea shops (the kind that serve lumps in their tea and charge extra for the opportunity to choke yourself), a few Japanese restaurants and a lot of Korean restaurants. Most of them were still unopened and so we ended up eating at Original Tommy’s Hamburgers. Which purports to be World Famous, but we’d never heard of them. In any case, any hamburger joint that opens at 7:00AM is starting out on the right foot already.

Inside we learned the first element of Tommy’s world-wide fame: Everything is served with chili on it. Now I love a good chili cheese-dog, so I figured if their chili is that good, then I might as well try it on a dog instead of a burger.

The first problem came in trying to communicate. The woman seemed to speak English. (If you think all the service people in Phoenix are all Mexican, or Mexican descended, these days, go to San Diego, it was significantly more prevalent.) Really, her English seemed quite good, but she could not understand the customers. It went like this:

“I’d like 2 Chili Cheese-Dogs.”

“With cheese?”

“Yeah.”

“Everything on them? Chili, tomato, onion, mustard, pickle?”

“No. No tomato, no mustard.” (Who freakin’ puts mustard on a chili dog?)

“So, 2 hot dogs, tomato and mustard only.”

“No. No tomato and no mustard.”

“Tomato and mustard only, then?”

“No. I do not want tomato. I do not want mustard. Everything else is fine.”

“Oh, you want everything on them.”

“No. Everything except tomato and mustard.”

“Tomato and mustard only?”

At this point Chu-Wan chips in, “Just tell her what you do want.”

I tried that, it had similar comic results, but finally we got it worked out and I got what I asked for.

I didn’t feel so bad when the next customer came in and ordered a cheeseburger, no onion and she replied, “Hamburger with onion only.” …and he went through a similar routine.

After we got our food, we discovered the second think Tommy’s is “famous” for – “You don’t have to ask for double helpings of toppings, be cause we put double on everything automatically.” My cheese-dogs were swimming in chili and onions – particularly onions.

Anyway, final analysis: It was fair.

Apart from the Asian-themed restaurants, the area comprised nothing more than the “usual” stores and businesses you’d find in any other city. Used car dealers, corporate offices, Sears, furniture stores… nothing special.

We headed to the nearest Costco so I could photograph it and, as Michelle was being a bit of a pest, we put her in the Ikea playground for an hour (Ikea and Costco being in the same parking lot) while we wasted some time in Ikea. We hoped playing with other kids might wear her out a bit. It didn’t.

Next we headed towards Point Loma, which is part of the Cabrillo National Monument. Point Loma is the bit of California that juts out as a small peninsula down at the bottom just by Mexico. It’s also an active military base/cemetary and we go stuck during a funeral.

Sweeping views of the sea and an old lighthouse are at lands end, which are interesting. Had I lived a hundred years ago, I think I could have been a lighthouse keeper in a place like this.

We went down to the tide pools but it was high tide and they weren’t there. There were still people watching for whales, but it was a little too late in the season.

Across the harbor we could see the carrier USS Midway, which is now a museum, and on this side of the harbor a submarine was in the dock as well as another smaller military vessel. F-15s were flying training flights in the area. My telephone wasn’t good enough to get very good pictures of them, and the submarine was mostly obscured by the buildings at the dock. Although I tried to match this plane’s silhouette against US Fighters, the shape of the nose and tail just doesn’t quite look like a proper F-15. Can anyone confirm or deny this identification?

Later than night we returned to 99 Ranch and ate at 168. I had some fairly authentic beef noodle soup, and Chu-Wan seemed to enjoy eating not only her own food, but the kids as well. I was pleased to see that Michelle actually spoke some Chinese to the owner of the restaurant. He thought she was really cute and kept saying so, but I don’t think he gave us a “cute kid” discount.

Was having trouble with maintaining a solid internet connection using the wired internet in the hotel, so I grabbed an Airport wireless link someone had open in the area. (I assume he must be an Apple user.) He also had his iTunes shared. Wow! 126.77GB of music. That’s impressive. They don’t even make an iPod that could hold it. That was over 70 days of music. My 20Gb seems diminutive by comparison.

Pity he didn’t have anything worth listening to.

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Travel

James has got this thing about fish in aquariums. He loves them. So we figured he’d love Sea World. I’m more ambivalent about the place, but perhaps I’ll discuss that more later.

Having a family can be expensive. Taking that family to Sea World can be astronomically expensive! I know they have to feed the whales, but it was $162 for us to get into the place! It would have been $206 had James not been under 3. Add to that the cost of lunch ($36 for two people and one child) and souvenirs (Cheap at only about $25) and that makes for a very expensive day at the park.

Both my telephoto lens and my new 2GB CF card got a workout trying to capture the action at the performances. I got several “good” action shots, but I have a lot of photos to delete. For lack of any particular talent at photography, the shotgun approach will have to suffice.

James loved the whales. After we’d seen the whale show, and we walked into the gift shop, he grabbed a whale off the shelf and wouldn’t give it up. He was pretty much inseparable from it for the rest of the day.

Because of the cameras, camcorders and a sudden and mysterious terror I now how about getting my electronic gear wet, (Hmm, I wonder why?) I made sure we were seated well away from the “soak zones” during the performances. Michelle felt cheated and wanted to get wet, so Chu-Wan took her on the Shipwreck Reef ride. She loved it the first time through and got a little wet.

They decided a go a second time, and while they were getting started, I realized I’d exhausted my 2GB CF card. I switched to one of my two 1GB backup cards and discovered it was full. Now, in a rush, I switched to the third card, just as Michelle and Chu-Wan passed by. I barely caught them on the second pass, but I could see Michelle was hunkered down for some reason.

It wasn’t hard to tell why when she came out the other side – she was soaked to the bone. Chu-Wan switched her into her swimsuit for the rest of the day, but it was clearly time to go.

We tried to let James see the whales up close, but they wouldn’t come over to the window, which was a disappointment.

After going back to the room and drying off, we headed out in search of food. We finally found a mall and ate Indian food, which wasn’t too bad. Unless you actually know what you’re looking for and where it is, San Diego is just like Phoenix or Tucson, just with a really crap layout. It’s just that never-ending sprawl of suburbia. (Well, suburbia was invented in California, afterall.)

Tomorrow… hmmm, tomorrow’s plan isn’t cast in stone yet.

Flickr Photoset of Sea World Here

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Natural Sciences, Travel

The San Diego Zoo is often considered the finest in the world. I don’t know what criteria is involved in making that assessment, so I’ll just pass on the statement without making judgement. As far as I know it is. It certainly is a very nice zoo.

We arrived shortly after they opened and even on a Tuesday, it was busy.

Michelle is very interested in seeing the animals, but at the same time has the attention span of a gnat, so she was constantly cruising ahead. James, on the other hand, was stuck mostly in his stroller. The zoo is steep – very steep in places. The kind of steep that would make for a very funny Benny Hill gag with an old man in a wheelchair. (Assuming you find gags of helpless people whizzing in wheelchairs to a crashing fate amusing. Personally, I do, if it also makes some insightful social commentary along the way.)

Where was I? Oh yes, steep hills. And buses, lots of buses. So James didn’t want to stay in his stroller, but he refused to hold hands and wanted to chase me. (I, in turn, was chasing Michelle.) Finally, at one point, on a steep hill he kept stepping on my heels. I warned him that was a mistake, so he did it again. This time he took a tumble, which left him with a goose egg-sized bump on his forehead. (Seen pictured here.)

I got a good few pictures of animals. (See my flickr account for more.)

Then we had lunch. $25 for three hot dogs!

It was still early, and we apparently hadn’t worn out the kids, so we walked around Balboa park for a while and visited the Natural History Museum.

We drove around town aimlessly, trying to find a place to eat that didn’t look like a bar with prostitutes hanging around outside and finally settled on KFC. Here we encountered the 50-year old man with the purple hair, who spent a lot of time playing games across the room with James. James was amused, but I couldn’t help thinking this guy was creepy.

Later than night I managed to locate the nearest Round Table Pizza. A treat, since none seem to still exist in Arizona.

Sea World tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Blog, California, Family, Kids, Travel

Well, I posted the journal entries for my 10 day 1998 trip to Taiwan, and, not too surprisingly, they now reside at the very beginning of my blog database, and can only be seen by looking back at the archive for May 1998.

As far as I can tell, they don’t even show up in the RSS feeds.

In a way, it was like a re-release of a movie. I got to correct a few spelling and grammatical errors. I went back to the source photo negatives, scanned them and touched them up in photoshop.

On certain entries, I made some new commentary. There were certainly things I didn’t know and just plain got wrong. While I did not use this opportunity to re-write history, I did make some comments about how my perceptions have changed in the last 8 years.

Update:I guess the least I could do is provide a link to the first installment. …and that link is here.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan

Last time I went to Taiwan, I was still unable to reach the 3rd Costco in Taipei (designated the Shih Chih Costco) due to a variety of technical problems.

None of the Costcos are conveniently accessible via subway, not that I would imagine being able to haul back a Costco-sized load of groceries on the subway anyway. Because of that, I’m unusually dependent on the kindness (and driving) of others to get to them.

We’ve been to one several times, and my father-in-law knows (more or less) where it is and takes us there to stock up.

The Second Costco I was able to locate on my Taipei city map, and with the assistance of a GPS and a subway map, I was able to track it down and walk to it from the Jin An station, about 1 mile.

But the third Costco has even more strikes against it, not only is it even further out, but my father-in-law is unfamiliar with the area. To complicate matters, it’s so far out that my Taipei city maps don’t reach it.

It was only by complete coincidence that, as we returned by freeway from Keelung at night, we spotted the illuminated Costco sign just off the freeway. Within moments it had passed behind the hills/trees, but I happened to have the GPS on and snapped a waypoint.

Google Earth recently upgraded the eastern Taipei satellite imagery making it possible to try to locate the Costco.

With a combination of Mapquest, Costco online, Google Earth and my GPS reading, I think I’ve determined where the last Costco is. It appears to be a 2.59 mile walk from Kunyang station.

I previously made a 1 mile hike to the Carrefour (also marked on the map) and I think this should be a fairly easy position to locate –assuming I’ve got the location right!

Anybody out there got a physical GPS fix on the Shih Chih Costco?

The estimate that I’ve made is:

25º 3′ 21.02″ N
121º 38′ 0.27″ E

Unfortunately, the Costco map doesn’t quite match the mapquest map, nor the satellite pictures – which is absolutely typical of Taiwan.

Look at the full-sized image to get a better picture of my estimates

Technorati Tags: Blog, Costco, GPS, Hiking, Taiwan, Travel